Saying it best with emoticons

We have been told that there are six basic emotions — anger, surprise, fear, enjoyment, sadness and disgust. Since we are now beholden to the world of emoticons, we are becoming aware that there are many more emotions. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, said in 2017 that their study of human expressions led them to believe that there were at least 27 distinct emotions observed thus far.

The study also revealed that emotions are interconnected. Says Dacher Keltner, the leader of the study: ‘There are smooth gradients of emotion between awe and peacefulness, horror and sadness, amusement and adoration.’ The emotions are: admiration, adoration, aesthetic appreciation, amusement, anger, anxiety, awe, awkwardness, boredom, calmness, confusion, craving, disgust, empathic pain, entrancement, excitement, fear, horror, interest, joy, nostalgia, relief, romance, sadness, satisfaction, sexual desire and surprise.

Indic tradition describes the navarasas — nine expressions — most popularly used in traditional dance forms, such as Bharatanatyam and Kathakali, to convey emotions. They are: shringara, romantic love; hasya, humour; karuna, compassion; raudra, rage; veera, valour; beebhatsa, disgust; bhayanaka, fear; adbhuta, wonder; and shanta, peace.In a dance performance of, say, three hours, wherein the dancer is telling a story that involves many characters and situations, the navarasas come in handy as they convey all that the different characters feel and portray in a given situation. Expressions are often far more eloquent in conveying emotions than are words, and hence the growing popularity of emoticons as a way of responding to mails and messages when one has no time for lengthy verbal responses. But now emoticons are used even when one is not strapped for time, as they seem to convey just what one wants to, with just one or two visual depictions of expression. To the point.

Often, one reads this line in an individual’s status on WhatsApp: ‘Only text, no calls’. Soon we may find something like: ‘Only emoticons, no text’. Will the disuse of wordy articulation lead to the death of the written and spoken word? Unlikely, though because of less usage, one could be found lacking in appropriate verbal expression. But who made the rules? The idea is to get the message across. But, what then of the lyrical allure of literature, the flowery language, the long monologues and the existential angst that finds an outlet in verbose outpourings?

‘I just called, to say, I love you…’ may soon become a thing of the past. Instead, you may receive emoticons — several hearts and cupids, or lips puckered for a kiss. And so life goes on.